Happy Thanksgiving!

Yikes. I can't believe it's been at least three weeks since my last post. That's a long time. But my lack of posts is due to lack of inspiration. I have not been up to much in Dhaka lately and I will admit, going to the gym and the spa can get a little old after a while. At the same time, I think my lack of inspiration is due to my own laziness. I could have easily organized a day trip outside of Dhaka or visited a museum or two (For example, I still need to visit the Liberation War Museum that depicts Dhaka's fight for independence.). But I didn't, so it's in part my own fault.

I should be feeling some more inspiration soon, however, as I am traveling to Kathmandu, Nepal tomorrow. I'm very excited to get out of Dhaka and explore a new country. I should have an interesting post, along with interesting pictures, when I return. In the meantime, I'll post some pictures that I've taken over the past few weeks to keep you entertained.

A Happy Thanksgiving to all! You can think of me trekking in the Himalayas while you're eating your turkey and stuffing. (Incidentally, I received about 6 invitations for Thanksgiving. Never fear, the Embassy community takes care of each other.)

My Commute to Work: The Traffic and the Garment Factory Workers


Say No to Drugs, Say Yes to Tacos: Outside El Toro, the only Mexican Restaurant in Dhaka (and I would bet all of Bangladesh). It's actually quite decent food for a Tex-Mex restaurant in Bangladesh.


Baskin Robbins in Banani: Baskin Robbins is my favorite kind of ice cream in the States. It wasn't exactly the same in Dhaka. If someone could explain what a "sublime and benignant" ice cream is that would be great. Also "artisan and aberrant" ice cream? I'm not really sure.


The Bull Outside my Hotel: I'm not quite sure what he's doing here.


The next few pictures are from a day trip I took to Gazipur. A colleague and I went to speak with various people about the upcoming Parliamentary elections, which have now been delayed until Decemebr 29th.

Traffic on the Way to Gazipur


The stuff people are able to put on a rickshaw--Amazing. I just feel bad for the poor rickshaw driver.


Narrow Roads: The roads were very narrow the further away from Dhaka we got. Thank goodness our drivers are great.


Crowds: This was a mass of people that surrounded my colleague and me. It doesn't take long before a crowd will surround me, especially in a smaller village.


Watch out for various traffic obstacles!


A Brick Making "Factory"


A Convenience Store


A Tea Stand (The picture is hazy because of the smoke billowing from the pot of boiling tea.)

It's Thursday!

(Ok, so now it's Friday here, but I started drafting this yesterday, so decided to keep the title.)

For some reason, "It's Thursday!" just doesn't have the same ring to it as "It's Friday!" I thought by now I would be used to working Sunday-Thursday and having the weekend on Friday and Saturday, but I'm beginning to think you never get used to it. It's always strange to watch tv Friday night and realize that financial markets are open in the U.S. and people are going about there regular business day. Not to mention the Sunday-Thursday work week makes it more difficult to connect with Washington. That's probably the hardest part. Due to our different weekends and the time difference, we only overlap with our Washington colleagues on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, making it sometimes tough to get things accomplished in a timely manner.

But our election event went great the other day. Like so many others around the world, the Bangladeshis that I've talked to are EXTREMELY excited about the election of Barack Obama. I think everyone feels that change is in the air and no matter what, it will be an exciting time. I particularly enjoyed reading the first paragraph of Ethan Bronner's NY Times article from November 5, 2008, which I think accurately portrays what people here are thinking of Obama's election: "From far away, this is how it looks: There is a country out there where tens of millions of white Christians, voting freely, select as their leader a black man of modest origin, the son of a Muslim. There is a place on Earth — call it America — where such a thing happens."

It's also interesting to juxtapose our American elections with the upcoming Bangladeshi Parliamentary elections that will be held on December 18th. Many Bangladeshis are skeptical as to whether elections will even happen in the first place, but if they do happen, the transition from the current Caretaker Government (which came to power in a "quasi-military coup" in 2007 and has attempted to make significant reforms over the past two years, all the while maintaining a State of Emergency) to the next government will not be smooth. As a result, it makes people nervous and anxious as to what the future holds for Bangladesh. Which, makes me grateful that I am from a country where, despite political differences, the transition from a Republican administration to a Democratic administration will be smooth. It's quite an amazing feat when you think about it.

Dhaka's Simple Pleasures

In an attempt to avoid watching CNN International for, oh, about the next 17 hours as we await with bated breathe the election of our new President, I decided to blog. (Incidentally, we are having a pretty bag bash tomorrow morning [since that's when polls will close in the U.S.] so that 800 of our closest Bangladeshi friends can watch the election returns with us and recognize the importance of voting. Perhaps I'll have more interesting anecdotes on that tomorrow.)

I've been meaning to blog about some of the other things I really enjoy about living here. They are small things, but always make me smile and make me thankful that I'm here experiencing a different culture and country.

1. The Call to Prayer. There's something very soothing about hearing the call to prayer a few times a day. While I typically don't hear calls during my day since I'm usually inside working, when I do hear it I try to relish the moment and pause for a few seconds. As my colleague Bob said, hearing the call five times a day is a great little reminder to be thankful for what you have and say a prayer (or at least think good thoughts) for family and friends. (I will admit though that, for obvious reasons, I could do without the 4:30 a.m. call to prayer. Fortunately, I usually don't hear that one.)

2. The Oodles of Sari Stores. While I'd heard that South Asia is full of beautiful cloth, I wasn't prepared for the inordinate amount of saris. There are entire stores--big stores--dedicated to saris and there are tons of shopping malls with one, two or three levels devoted entirely to saris. Each store will have a myriad of saris lined along the wall in what are basically bookshelves. When you enter the stores, barefoot men sitting on an elevated, padded bench will ask you which sari you want to see and they will pull out sari after sari from the shelf until you are satisfied. Plus, they'll even try it on so you can see what it looks like! Frankly, the number of choices are overwhelming and I have yet to buy a sari. But I am getting more confident in shopping for one, which makes the epxerience all the more enjoyable and, simply, makes me happy. I'll try to snag a picture of one of these stores soon so you can see better picture what I'm talking about, but in the meantime, check out one of my colleague's posts' on her sari shopping experience. It's much more eloquent than my account.

3. People Singing on the Street. Perhaps Bangladeshis are just more uninhibited than Americans? Probably not, but it is true when it comes to singing in public places. I often pass by men randomly singing to themselves while carrying a load of fruit on their head or rickshaw wallahs singing to pass the time before they get another fare. I appreciate this attitude of not caring who hears them and wish we could import this to the States (perhaps this is because I like to sing?). If only I could understand what they were singing, I'm sure I would enjoy it even more.

4. Splash (at the Westin). Ok, ok. So this is actually a Western import to Dhaka, but I find this cafe that sits by the pool extremely relaxing. There's a great waterfall and lots of plants, not to mention the food is pretty darn good, if expensive, particulalry by Dhaka standards. I only just discovered Splash, so perhaps the novelty of it is why I'm including it in this entry. But still, I haven't found many cafes in the States that are as enjoyable. Although, really, let's be honest, that's probably because I wouldn't be able to afford going to a place like this in the States! But, hey, at least I recognize number 4 as an elitist, Western simple pleasure.

I'm sure there are other simple pleasures that I'm missing. As I think of them, I'll let you know what they are, but for now, back to watching CNN!

A Weekend of Culture

So I haven't posted in a while because, frankly, not too much has been going on. Life is well--full of squash, swimming, dinners with friends, but nothing majorly exciting. But, this weekend was full of culture.

Friday, I went to the studio/apartment of Kalidas Karmakar, a fairly well-known Bangladeshi artist. A few of his pieces are at the Embassy and I've really admired his work, so I lucked out when my boss organized an outing so we could check out some of his art. Frankly, I was hoping for a free piece of art, but I knew that was wishful thinking. Instead, I got a cool poster featuring one of his works, a booklet of some of his pieces, and a tasty Bengali lunch with nice company and good conversation.

Continuing my culural weekend, my colleague and friend David and I checked out an event at the Lalbagh Fort hosted by the Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It was an evening of "Sound and Light" and ended up being pretty cool. The Fort is in Old Dhaka, and while I haven't seen it during the day, it was impressive surrounded by lights and all set up for this big event. A brief sound and light show depicting Dhaka's 400 year history started the night and then that was followed by...a fashion show! That's right, a fashion show. You can check out a picture of it here. It was the first fashion show I've ever been to and I felt very Project Runway/America's Next Top Model-esque. The show portrayed various fashion in Dhaka throughout the years--the Mughal influence, the British influence, post-1947 Dhaka, and post-independence Dhaka. It was definitely cool, although it went on a little long. So long, in fact, that we skipped out on dinner and went to Pizza Hut, where we knew what kind of food we'd be getting and wouldn't have to stand in a long buffet line.

Here's David and me with one of the "guards" for the evening. Incidentally, another "guard" offered to take our picture, we had to kindly turn the camera around for him since he had no idea which way the camera should face. Oops!


I topped off my weekend with a shopping trip to Dhanmondi with a few girls from work, where we visited the the Bengal Gallery of Fine Art. A weekend full of art and culture...in Dhaka.